Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Salt air

We both know the dangers. We’re too old now for this sort of thing. We’d be putting out to sea in a very frail craft indeed and neither of us in the past have proved ourselves to be natural sailors.

So maybe there’s something to be said for staying where we are. For choosing friendship, laughter, sensuality, objectivity, a certain emotional distance. Not moving from here means we can still access logic and rationality when we need it. We haven’t really left dry land.

Yet just occasionally there will be a shift for a second or two and you reveal some of your vulnerability. At these moments my heart lurches and the night air seems to carry a hint of salt from the ocean, many miles away.

21 Comments:

Hmm. I suspect 'we're too old now for this sort of thing' is never true, as long as you're alive... Perhaps we wish it was. And it's just when you have NO expectations... Yes, indeed, you put it beautifully.

It is beautiful. What interests me most is the idea that it's when the "other" reveals their vulnerability rather than demonstrates their strength that you/we feel most inclined to want to take that risk. That says something about the nature of love, I think. That it blossoms when we let our guard down.

That doesn't mean we leap an entire chasm, though. Or rush to the sea, in this case. Only stay soft, and see where it goes.

Too old? No, never. But there is something to be said for taking time, and lots of it. This is so beautifully expressed, Mary, full of tenderness and watchfulness and yearning and the faraway sound of the ocean like breathing... with an occasional scent of salt spray.

mary, i believe that in that "shift" the parts of ourselves that we give away are perhaps more importantly the ones we actually give ourselves.

sailing on an unknown sea really is the discovery of love and of self as we lean into the fear of the exploration and the thrill of it. on the stage of learning more about the feelings of another we actually learn the most about ourselves. and jean is right - we are never too old to invest in that curriculum. :) in the meantime, ain't love grand?!

Very nicely put - this piece on the Salt Air, and I can see why you might have been reluctant to post these thoughts and wishes. Sometimes we don't want to pin down the whispering shapes and put a name to our fluttering desires.